No abstract

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:198285 [] For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The authors are in the process of exploring an information support robot to support daily activities of people with mild cognitive impairment or dementia. The purpose of this paper is to reveal how the robot should talk to an older woman with dementia to make her perform daily activities. Design/methodology/approach -The robot asked to the participant to do some daily activities; Task A, taking medicine; Task B, measuring blood pressure; and Task C, cleaning up the room in three different ways for each task. In the talking pattern 1 (TP1), the robot simply informed what the tasks were. The talking patterns 2 and 3 (TP2 and TP3) were separated according to the process of activities in two and three steps, respectively. The participant was required to answer "Yes" if she understood what the robot talked to her, and perform the tasks. Findings -The participant was not able to prepare water in the Task A when the robot spoke the TP1 (performance rate (PR) was 71.4 per cent). However, she could perfectly take medicine in the case when the robot spoke the processes of the task by the TP3 (PR was 100.0 per cent). The similar tendencies were observed in the Tasks B and C. Research limitations/implications -Multicenter studies would be required to apply these findings to a larger population. Originality/value -The authors confirmed that it might be important to determine how the robot talked to people with dementia to properly facilitate their daily activities.

Objective/background: Agitation is a common behaviour of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Although healing robots have previously been used for alleviating agitation for people with dementia in hospitals and other healthcare facilities, its effects remain unclear whether an information-support robot capable of disseminating information with user needs may have similar effects when it is applied in community dwellings. This study was to investigate the effects of information-support robots for reducing agitation in older people with AD residing alone in community-dwellings. Methods One participant with AD who lived alone in a community-dwelling was recruited. Participant’s frequencies, durations, and time courses of four patterns of agitation at home at baseline and during intervention were analysed. In this study, agitation was defined as: (a) restlessness going to the corridor (RLtoC), (b) restlessness going to the toilet (RLtoT), (c) restlessness going to the entrance (RLtoE), and (d) restlessness going to multiple places (RLtoMP). In the intervention phase, the information-support robot disseminated daily schedule or date information to the participant. Results RLtoC and RLtoMP were significantly reduced in frequency during the intervention. The durations of each episode of RLtoT and RLtoMP in the intervention were slightly reduced than those at the baseline. There were no differences in time courses of episodes of RLtoC and RLtoMP after the intervention. Conclusion This case study showed that information-support robot was useful to alleviate agitation of an older adult with AD living alone in a community-dwelling. Further study is warranted.

Aim: To improve access to cognitive testing for older adults, the reliability and acceptability of a speech-based cognitive test administered by a social robot were investigated. Methods:The Japanese version of the Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status was administered by a social robot to participants recruited from retirement homes and adult daycare facilities. The robot's dialogue and gestures were preprogrammed, while the researcher controlled the timing of proceeding to the next question and scored participants' responses. We examined the internal consistency, alternate form reliability (experiment 1) and test-retest reliability (experiment 2) of the cognitive test. The acceptability of the cognitive test was also examined using a questionnaire in experiment 2.Results: A total of 66 individuals (mean age 81.2 AE 5.8 years) participated in experiment 1; the internal consistency (Cronbach's α) of the test was 0.691 and its alternate form reliability (measured by interclass correlation coefficient) was 0.728. A total of 40 of these individuals (mean age 82.0 AE 5.4 years) also participated in experiment 2, and the test-retest reliability was 0.818. According to the questionnaire responses, over half of the participants wanted (or very much wanted) to use the robot version of the test to measure the deterioration of their cognitive function. Conclusions:A robot-administered cognitive test might have satisfactory reliability and acceptability to community-dwelling older adults if those aspects of the test implemented by the researcher can also be successfully automated.

Objective/BackgroundOlder people with dementia often show behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia such as agitation, aggression, and depression that affect their activities of daily living, and hence reduce the quality of life of their caregivers. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a new technological intervention—a parametric speaker, creating a narrow personal acoustic environment, which may reduce the manifestation of behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia symptoms.MethodsA parametric speaker was placed on the ceiling of a large day room, and personally selected pieces of music were provided in a narrow space just under the speaker during the intervention. Two older residents with behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia participated in the experiment.ResultsPlaying pieces of favorite music via the parametric speaker decreased their behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia during the intervention. In addition, this intervention reduced the burden on caregivers. One of the advantages of using parametric speaker was being able to create a personal space in a common room.ConclusionWe considered that the parametric speaker might be useful to reduce behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia and the burden on caregivers, providing individualized rehabilitation for the improved quality of life of residents.

IntroductionPeople with cognitive impairments often have difficulties in managing their time for daily activities. In older adults with cognitive impairments such as dementia and stroke, these may present as disorientation, poor time awareness, time perception, daily time management and so on. Time-related deficits and associated behaviours impede independent living and add considerably to caregiver strain. Several interventions are being investigated to help people with cognitive impairments orient and navigate time and do their daily activities. The provision of interventions requires the use of sound assessment tools. However, it is not clear how time-related concepts are specifically evaluated in practice, what are the available assessments and how these assessments should be selected.Method and analysisThis protocol follows the Joanna Briggs Institute Reviewer’s Manual (2020) for scoping reviews and is registered with the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/4ptgy/). We will include the following databases: PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, Web of Science and PsycINFO. Two reviewers will independently screen eligible studies for inclusion against the selection criteria and then review the full-text of the selected studies. We will extract the bibliographic data, study design and setting, and details of assessments used in the studies to evaluate time-related concepts including format, mode and duration of administration, psychometric properties and so on. The identified assessments will be mapped with regard to time-related concepts being evaluated and described using narrative synthesis.Ethics and disseminationAs secondary data analysis, ethics approval is not required for this scoping review. We plan to disseminate the results through peer-reviewed journals and conferences targeting health professionals working with older adults.

No abstract

No abstract